A Light in the Dark
by my-graceless-heart
Summary: I was listening to the song "A Light in the Dark" when I realized that that might be one outcome of a Clintasha marriage. This is the result. Dedicated to svemilia on tumblr for being an awesome follower :D


Or, I'm going to break your heart and you're going to enjoy it. Avengers/Next to Normal crossover. Clintasha.

Tasha finally gives in to the idea of love: something that's been locked away in her since her parents sold her to the KGB for the chance to survive. All of her crying didn't do her much good then. She could dissemble and reassemble a Kalashnikov by the age of six, but understand why her parents let her go? Never. They died a few years later anyway. Her handler told her that. She didn't pay much attention to it. She was on her first assignment and had no room for error. Later she cried again, but at that point her main memory of her parents was the warmth of their arms leaving her as she was left in the cold Russian agency.

Clint finally shows her there's something more than the next job. He saves her when he was supposed to kill her, and a spark is reawakened in her. Not love, perhaps, but a sort of affection that grows between comrades in arms. He watches over her on her S.H.I.E.L.D. assignments, and she helps keep him grounded with her sharp mind and even sharper tongue.

The first time, they're both drunk after an assignment in Budapest, and Tasha's sharp witticisms and retorts melt into something warmer and altogether more human. Clint feels safe to her, like the warm, encircling protection of her parents again. That's what she remembers of Budapest, before waking up, realizing what she had done, and leaving before the sun had risen. That's what Clint remembers: waking up to a cold bed and an even colder Tasha.

Still, he tries to be there for her. He read her file: he knows how she was abandoned at the age of five. He knows how most of her assignments are seduction to kill. He supposes he should feel lucky. He's the one conquest that Black Widow didn't kill. He keeps tabs on her even when she's halfway across the world. What else could he do? She enchanted him, in the worst, most painful, addictive way possible.

When he's taken by Loki, Tasha can't help but panic. It's because of Budapest; she knows. This always happens. Why should Clint be any different? And then she gets him back and hearing him say her name brings a rush of affection like she had never known. She's scared, of course. But she pulls through and they stop the Chitauri and saved the world.

The second time is after Tony insisted on getting shawarma. They're both stone cold sober, and Clint keeps asking if she's sure. Of course she's sure. She couldn't bear to lose him again. Now she knows that. She persuades him to let them disappear, and they move to a tiny town in Indiana. When she first feels her son stirring in her she's scared again. It's a boy, and all she can think about is how her parents left her all alone when she was little. She swears never to do that to this little boy, already so strong and so like his father.

But then comes that rainy spring morning, when his small fists stop waving and an intestinal complication takes her son away from her. She's never the same after that. Even her daughter, born two years later, doesn't help. She can't even hold little Natalie. Clint has to shush her and take care of her. Tasha just can't.

Years pass, and Natalie grows up to be headstrong, brilliant, and beautiful. "Like her mother," Clint always says with a grin, but he only gets a half hearted smile from Tasha in return. Natalie wants to go to Yale for music. She wants to play at Carnegie hall and Tasha is so proud of her, and of her son, Gabe. He's still there, you see. For her. Just for her. She makes him his lunch every morning, and he's on the football team and in the concert band and she couldn't be prouder. Clint doesn't know what's wrong. Natalie just knows that sometimes her mother starts talking to thin air, and it scares her.

Finally, when Natalie's sixteen Tasha breaks down. Clint realizes she's seeing Gabe and takes her to get help. There are pills and treatments, and finally electro shock therapy, which leaves her with nothing. No knowledge of who she is, or where she came from. Slowly, the memories begin to come back, and she starts disappearing at night. She comes back bruised and beaten, and Clint realizes she's slipping back into the life she led before they walked away. He pleads with her not to go, but she feels like she has to. She feels dead otherwise.

One night, she doesn't come back. Clint goes out looking, but he knows Tasha. She won't be found if she doesn't want to be. Something broke in her, all those years ago, he realizes. She believed that love might not be just for children, and the world threw it in her face.

Sometimes, he still calls Avengers Tower. Just to see if they have any information on her, or where she might be. Agent Hill apologizes every time. They never found her.

One day, the doorbell rings. It's Tasha, looking worn out and ragged, the jacket he gave her when they were first married hanging around her gaunt frame. She doesn't say anything; just gives him a hug and drives away. From then on, she does this once every few months or so. Once, he asks her to come in. She shakes her head, still not saying a word. He tries to follow her, too, but he was never very good at tailing anyone if he wasn't in the air and so he loses her.

Then, she stops showing up and he gets a call from Avengers Tower. It's Agent Hill. "I'm sorry," she says. "But we found her. She was curled up in front of your son's grave. We couldn't do anything."

Clint sits on the front porch for a while, head in his hands. He keeps asking himself why, but he knows. She loved, and lost, and it was that, more than anything, that broke her. With a heavy sigh, he stands up, walks into their house, the house Tasha picked out, that she was so proud of, and closes the door.


End file.
